France's pensions body has concluded that the handsome payment for returning
to foreign service for one day's work was improperly applied, according to
official sources

Mr Villepin was a classmate of President Hollande at ENAPhoto: GETTY IMAGES

Rory Mulholland in Paris

4:46PM GMT 27 Mar 2014

Dominique de Villepin, the former French prime minister, illegally benefited from an early retirement scheme for diplomats under which he walked away with nearly €100,000 for a day's work, official sources have told the Telegraph.

The payment was made after Mr Villepin returned to the French foreign service for just one day after an absence of 20 years.

After the handsome pay-off was revealed by The Telegraph earlier this month, the French foreign minister insisted that it was in line with a mechanism set up for diplomats to retire early.

But official sources have now told this newspaper that following extensive press coverage of the affair in France, the state body that oversees civil servants’ pensions examined Mr Villepin’s case and concluded that it was not legal.

The pay-off infuriated many French as it came at a time when Socialist President François Hollande's government is preaching austerity, raising taxes and making savage cuts across the board.

Neither the foreign ministry nor Mr Villepin's spokesman responded when asked by The Telegraph if the politician, best known abroad for his impassioned speech to the United Nations in 2003 against the invasion of Iraq, was being asked to repay the money.

Mr Villepin, 60, was last September taken back into the diplomatic service - which he left in 1993 - for just one day, which the ministry said enabled him to to qualify for the pay-off.

But the Service des Retraites de l'Etat, the body overseeing pensions, says the early retirement mechanism was for diplomats who had served out their full career at the ministry, and therefore Mr Villepin did not qualify, sources said.

Mr Villepin served as foreign minister from 2002 to 2004. Ministry spokesmen insist that the current minister, Laurent Fabius, was not informed of the decision to take his predecessor back into the ministry nor of the pay-off he received.

But Jean-François Copé, the leader of the opposition UMP party and himself a former minister, said Mr Fabius must have known about it.

"Of course he was informed. It's compulsory," he told The Telegraph.

Mr Fabius is, like Mr Villepin, a graduate of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA), an exclusive university which produces many of the French elite. Mr Villepin was a classmate of President Hollande at ENA.

When initially contacted by the Telegraph two weeks ago, Mr Villepin's spokesman said he had been paid the bonus due to an "administrative error" which he had sought to "rectify".

The foreign ministry ignored repeated questions as to whether there had been a mistake regarding Mr Villepin, and then issued a statement saying it was entirely legal.

It sent The Telegraph a scan of an official decree dated 7 October 2013 that said Mr Villepin was benefiting from the retirement mechanism.

But this decree did not appear to have been published on the usual official website, which on that date published similar decrees naming three top executives in the foreign service who were benefiting from the same mechanism.

The ministry did not respond to queries as to whether the decree regarding Mr Villepin had actually been published or not, and if not, why not.

It also declined to say exactly how generous was the payment to Mr Villepin, but said it was less than the €100,000 figure which official sources provided.

The investigative weekly Le Canard Enchainé put it at €88,787

Mr Villepin was lampooned last year in a political comedy film, titled The French Minister, which also featured Julie Gayet, President Hollande's alleged mistress, in a role as an oversexed diplomatic adviser.

L'Express magazine in 2012 valued Mr Villepin's personal wealth at €4 million and noted that in 2010 he bought a house in Paris for €3 million.

The poetry-writing politician was a diplomat from 1980 until 1993, serving in Paris, Washington and New Delhi.

He then took a job as chief of staff for the then foreign minister before running Jacques Chirac's successful 1995 presidential campaign.

Despite never having been elected to any public office, Mr Villepin went on to serve as foreign minister, interior minister and finally prime minister from 2005 until 2007, when Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president.